Lindsay graduated from Northern Illinois University in 2004 with a degree in Visual Communications. Lindsay currently works as an artist & designer in Rockford, IL. This is her abortion story.

As a senior in college, becoming a mother was not a part of my agenda. My boyfriend and I had lofty dreams, goals, and aspirations. We were prepared planners who knew the importance of higher education and were grounded in the fact that we were going to become professionals first and parents later.

Statistical believers, we were devastated to find that we fell within the two percent margin in which the birth control pill does not in fact prevent unwanted pregnancy. Products of a generation groomed to feel more entitled than any group preceding us, we probably took the right to choose more casually than the pro-choice activists of the 1970s. In an era where the Roe vs. Wade decision is as normal to American 20-somethings as the desegregation of public schools, our reaction to the first positive pregnancy test was what you have been fighting for: “We have a choice to make.” In our situation, we chose abortion. Actually, my boyfriend chose abortion… and I agreed because, to be honest, I believed you.

At a time in my life when i thought everything was crushing down Around me, and I needed something to believe, I believed you—the people of the pro-choice movement. I believed you when you told me that I had the right to place a higher value on my life than that of my unborn child. I believed you when you told me that it would be safe. I believed you when you told me that it was only tissue. That it wasn’t a human yet. That it was only cells. I believed you when you said that it didn’t hurt. I believed you when you said that there is no such thing as post-abortion syndrome. I believed you when you told me that if I terminated my pregnancy, life would go back to normal, just the way it was before I ever conceived. Because that was my right, wasn’t it? And so I chose. I chose abortion—because I believed you. And less than a year later, I believed you again—when you advised that a medical abortion would be a more “natural” way to end my second unplanned pregnancy.

Initially feeling a sense of liberation and comfort in my right to choose, I was thankful for your efforts and grateful that you were so concerned for my freedom. However, now having gone through two abortion experiences, I can only conclude that many of you have never made the choice that I did. If you had, wouldn’t you have told me more… because you care about me, right? You would have told me about the way the clinic smells of blood and death. You would have told me that undergoing a surgical abortion would be the worst pain I would ever experience. You would have told me that you can hear and feel the tissue being ripped away and sucked out of your body, and that even years later I wouldn’t be able to stand the sound of a normal household vacuum cleaner. You would have told me that they make post-abortive patients leave out of the back door because they don’t want anyone coming in to know what someone looks like going out. You would have told me that the evil presence in those clinics feels so thick you could cut it with a knife. You would have told me that my uterus could be punctured.

You would not have told me that it is only tissue. You would not have told me it was only cells. If you, too, had taken Mifepristone and given birth to a six-week-old embryo, you would not have told me it was not yet a baby. You would have told me it had a brain and a heartbeat and was very much a child. You would know because you, like me, would have seen it. You would have held it and known immediately that what you just killed was, in fact, a baby… but by that time it would be too late to change your mind. You would have told me about the nightmares and the enormous sense of loss. You would have told me that my abortions would end any hope for my boyfriend and I to ever have a family together. And, because you care about me, I would like to think that if you had known, you would have told me that when your baby dies, a part of you dies right along with it. The choice to terminate the hope of one life actually terminates the hope of two, and no matter how hard I wanted things to go back to normal, they never would.

And so, supporters of the pro-choice movement, there is something you need to know. Although your fight for my right to choose legally granted me the ability to play god by taking two lives that weren’t mine to take, you forgot something. You forgot something very, very important. True, you found a way for me to legally take two lives. And you provided me with multiple ways to justify those deaths. But, unlike God, you forgot to find a way for me to allow the continuation of a life—in this case, mine.

You also need to know that i forgive you. I forgive you for being blind to His truth like I was. I forgive you for fighting for a right that we don’t deserve to have. I forgive you on behalf of myself, the more than 50 million aborted babies, and all the other women in the world who believed you as well. But I am asking you to please, as you’re fighting, know exactly what it is that you are fighting for.